Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet
Ryan and Shaz here. We’re building muzmatch (https://muzmatch.com), an app that helps single Muslims meet their partner. We refer to ourselves as a dating app largely for SEO but the reality is our users don’t tend to date, they marry!
Marriage is central to many Muslims’ upbringings and ethnic, family, and religious pressures make it a difficult search. The casual Western apps don’t cater for this market and the existing Islam-specific offerings are outdated, ineffective websites.
As a practising Muslim, Shaz experienced this problem firsthand. He quit a 10 year career in banking to write and release an MVP back in April ’15. With promising traction, he found me (Ryan) on LinkedIn in the then New Year. It was clear it could be a massive opportunity but I believed it needed to broaden its appeal (then it was as an ultra serious marriage service) and modernise its branding/marketing to position it for the new generation: this seemed like a great challenge!
We’ve tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic’s culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:
- Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations - Full privacy: Users can blur their photos and use a nickname to remain anonymous to friends and family - Fully verified: All manually approved, Selfie, GPS, and SMS verified users - Relevant: Profile information that matters to many in their search, like Islamic, sect, and ethnicity filters
We’re now ~2 years in with 200,000 users and are thrilled to have helped over 6,000 find their partner.
We’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
143 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadWe think the former is likely higher too as many choose to keep it private
That's too old for Muslim men.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Whats 'Halal, free, and fun'?
Whats you tech stack like?
and many downvotes are because there are in-app purchases. Seems to be quite a problem with play store. They should have an algorithm or UX flow to weed out such reviews.
Halal being "ok" Islamically, free as the old competition are very expensive, and fun so the process sounds noncommittal (many are put off by fearing being rushed into something they're not necessarily ready for)
It's a LEMP stack heavily utilising Memcached for performance and XMPP for real time functionality
That seems incredibly sexist to me. Women need a guardian, wtf...
I wonder why there isn't a platform for single people where dating companies are just apps on top of the platform. Seems like bad user experience that a user needs to maintain multiple accounts.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but I think the really big company in this space will be a platform for single people.
I like the idea of having LinkedIn and not just adding all my work contacts on Facebook. I want to be sure that the information I share on the dating platform and Facebook don't mix too easily. Curating my Facebook data once when signing up to a dating app is fine.
Strangers don't belong in that model because they are not friends. Most people want to keep strangers away from your real life until they become friends so having a third party site keeps that experience away from preying eyes. Once a couple is formed they will connect over facebook and start sharing their experiences.
You might be right though, it might consolidate in the future if people figure out really good interfaces that make it work well for many use cases.
We're solving for very specific requirements, aside from the benefit of shared identity I think it'd be a lot harder to keep the product free of feature creep and still appeal to all
Thanks for the kind words
Out of curiosity, how does "all profiles being verified manually" scale?
It definitely keeps us busy 24/7 but we've built some internal tools to make this as quick and efficient as possible
We're definitely nearing the point of needing a dedicated Community Manager to take over this function
Why do you want to keep people from specific religions stick together? It's for a society always better if groups mix instead of a ghettoization. I know that still many try to stay with their people which is totally fine but why enforcing it? You write yourself that there is a strong 'religious pressure'. With your product you make this pressure even worse. Oh I have to find someody of my religion and skin color, everything else is forbidden. It's not, it's 2017.
It's just not right. Imagine I make tomorrow a dating app for white Christians. Just with this description, I exclude other religions and skin colors and probably imply that those folks are inferior, you get it?
The biggest issue that all people who look like your target demo suffer from these stereotypes you create and enforce. Oh look at this dark skin guy, he probably looks for a wife wearing a headscarf 24/7, doesn't eat pork and prays on a carpet five times a day. Nothing bad about this lifestyle, it's a totally fine way of living which I respect, but please do not create stereotypes. There are many of your target demo who are happily fine to marry someone not from their religion.
And dating as a business is super though (eg banned by FB Ads) and since Tinder almost impossible. Unsure about your growth potential. Religous folks still use traditional ways (parents and co) and the other use traditional dating apps.
And2: Paul himself wrote himself many times, do not do dating. Why does YC still do dating?
Like it or not, people have preferences.
A few year ago, I joined Match. You know how many of my 'matches' explicitly stated they don't want to date my ethnicity and only want to date their own? A lot.
Then I joined CoffeeMeetsBagel. And while I never explicitly mentioned a preferred ethnicity, they kept matching me up with women of my own ethnicity despite the fact that 50% of the people in my city are not my ethnicity. Again, how much of that is women explicitly stating they don't want to be matched up to men of my ethnicity?
My point is that even though some apps have a generalized population, the idea of intermingling is a minority. In the U.S. I think interracial marriages are like 10% of all total marriages. And religion has way more differences in terms of life style and philosophy than ethnicity.
There are lots of dating services for Christians only, that's not new.
Just because people are super religious doesn't mean they are resistant to all types of change. Not sure what you mean by "super religious" but I know a lot of people personally who have found this app useful who are practicing Islam in a traditional way
They are not forcing anyone to do anything. They are giving people an option.
If a Muslim wants to marry another Muslim, and this helps them accomplish that better than Tinder or any other apps, that's great. Why is that such a problem for you? Why do you even suppose it's any of your business?
Full disclosure: I am agnostic.
It's a free world dude.
this app/site is a safe ("halal") place for a _self-selecting_ group to congregate. how can you possibly have an issue with that? the people who explicitly want to find a muslim spouse can use this site, the people who don't particularly care if their spouse is muslim will use some other one.
if you want to build that site (for people specifically trying to find a spouse instead of trying to have fun, but not explicitly for muslims), just do it and quit shitting on this site.
When you say 'white Christians' you're changing the subject in a particularly trollish way. Please don't comment like that here.
> When you say 'white Christians' you're changing the subject in a particularly trollish wa
No, it is not trollish, not at all. It's exactly what they are doing and IDK what is different with my example. 'Religion' is also often used as a polite way to target ethnicity. Which is also reflected in my example (and exaggerated to make it clear).
Dang, I think I brought some valid points and I would be happy to hear your/YC's opinion without sticking to some rethoric nuances of my post. Since YC is invested there might be some bias on your side.
This idea discriminates and strongly creates stereotypes. If latter is wrong please let me know why. Or Sam may reply.
I can't stop such ideas but I can kindly ask people like you who represent HN why you back such businesses.
You can answer, you can ban or shadowban me and/or censor this post. But whatever you do I would be happy about a response.
Just imagine I would be one of the bigger LPs of YC (before shadowbanning me).
To the downvoters: just keep on, I don't care.
EDIT: regarding you other point
> There are plenty of apps for Christians, as for all other kinds of specialized markets.
They are also just plainly wrong. The subtle difference is that YC is in none of them invested. And for some very good reason.
Also, devout Christians do the same. Right or wrong, until the whole world is athiest, this won't change.
Also, secular Muslims probably aren't the target demographic of this app, just like secular Christians likely won't be on Christian Mingle...
What about features in an app that allow users to filter profiles of potential mates by their religion? Or age? Or gender?
I think I understand where you're coming from - that the app contributes to cultural divisiveness - but I don't think I like the implication, which to me is "one is not allowed to seek ways of finding others of a similar culture." If you don't allow projects to be created that allow people to find those similar to them, you are taking away their ability to do so.
This is what I want. That people find their SO on a natural and unexpected way and not by sticking to their roots and setting the right filter in their dating app. Do you think Americans would be Americans today if hundreds years ago all the immigrants stayed with their groups? And again I use religion and ethnicity here equally since most of these platform do this implicitely too.
A society can only evolve and develop in a healthy way if groups mix. There are already so many barriers which hinder us to interact with others. Just say no to rules from the last century.
2. Do you genuinely believe that your opinion on the matter means that dating apps (all of them) should not exist? (note that you would have to say this as an outlier - clearly, people love dating apps, and clearly, people have found their life partners through them)
Addressing 1, because it illustrates to me what I believe is the largest hole in your argument. You claim "hundreds of years ago all immigrants DID NOT stay within their groups," and that platforms implicitly put people into groups (implication: people wouldn't do this if it were not for platforms).
I am somewhat surprised that you believe this - it's as if you've never been to a China Town or Harlem, or lived abroad in a country where nobody speaks your native language. Like people mingle with like people, and immigrant populations meld slowly, very rarely losing ALL of their identity. All of known society operates on this history, and obviously our society isn't ideal but it's certainly functional having existed on this paradigm. And, as time marches forward, so do the cultures merge further. Why try to speed up the process unnecessarily?
That people mix with those similar to them now being established (feel free to challenge me on it! I'm just saying, that's my premise here), it would only be "natural" for them to do so with or without an app to aid them. They clearly want to do it, so of course people will capitalize on that desire with businesses. YCombinator, I believe, operates as an investor, and an investor will want to fund businesses that operate on successful business models... I mean really, I'm having a hard time seeing how you can challenge this?
Anyway, you talk about barriers, but really I think you're the one arguing for barriers, by setting rules around how people are allowed to interact. I like riding motorcycles, but in your world I would not be allowed to specifically seek out other motorcycle riders, because somehow it is healthier for society that the percentage of my friends that are motorcyclists is perfectly equal to the percentage of society that are motorcyclists. The whole concept of shared hobbies falls apart under this model, for no reason. Because of apps I can seek out new hobbies and people that do things differently than me - I don't want to be forced to do that, I can do it on my own time!
Please don't comment like that here.
Troll, noun: Critic of Paul Graham or Ycombinator.
Or maybe a dot on a 2D graph? Or maybe a point inside a hypercube.
So, this leads to my original question of whether the product will enable this. I'd hate (probably too strong of a word) to see a product get awesome HN coverage that actively works against ('discriminate') LGBTQX folks.
@abbasiddartha > beat me to it. I agree.
Perhaps if You see a business opportunity you could create an app that serves the Muslim LGBTQX community?
A dating service serving a niche can help people pre-filter their matches. For example someone of higher education or earning might want to only find people of similar education. It would be discrimination to prevent people of lower education from purchasing from a cup cake delivery service. But not to filter them from a dating service.
As I understand it there are dating services that specialise in matching non straight couples. Is this discrimination against straight people?
In any case, brod_ie has said "We're supportive of this and is definitely on our radar reply", so I'm sufficiently satisfied! ^.^
I think the real question is whether the app is intended for people who are currently practicing muslims or people who were brought up muslim. There's many non practicing Muslims who keep the Islamic morality like former christians and jews do.
Don't get me started on email..!
Is the "Wali" a human being? If yes, how will that scale?
> How do I include a Wali or Guardian on muzmatch?
> We want muzmatch to be a Halal and safe place for all our members to find their partner.
> Women can enter a Wali or Guardian's email address in Menu → Settings to give them extra peace of mind.
> Once their email has been confirmed they’ll receive weekly transcripts of your Chats on muzmatch.
[1]: https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or-guardian...
She always mentions how she's puzzled over the "Always pray / sometimes pray / never pray" options under religious practice. Can you explain your thought process in coming up with those options?
I want to say that I can see why your app would be a tremendous challenge from a product development standpoint. What you have as a user base in America are basically a mix of many different immigrant cultures that each have their own idea of Islamic traditional marriage customs - Somalian vs. Arab vs. Indopak vs. West African vs. Cham vs. vs. vs..., as well as clashes between youth & elder viewpoints, as well as a large indigenous (I use the term loosely - we're all immigrants to an extent) American Muslim population as well (something that foreigners usually are shocked to hear - Americans becoming Muslim?! What!!). Do your research well & don't give up
I ask Allah to guide you to a product that is beneficial for the Muslims - and also materially successful!
Edit: Also, my email address was used at one point as the "wali" contact but I stopped getting digest emails from the conversations inexplicably. You may need tighter QA around that pipeline
Absolutely it's a challenge and we're aiming to be as inclusive as possible
Interesting, if you email me (ryan@muzmatch.com) I can look into this further for you
Thanks again
If your users "don't tend to date" then why are you optimizing for the word "dating" why not SEO for term "marrying app"?
>"We’ve tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic’s culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:"
I'm sorry but women having chaperones, blurring photos and filtering by sect and ethnicity doesn't sound very "fun and light" to me.
There is a colon at the end of the third to last sentence that uses the phrase "fun and light" but then those optional features in the hyphenated list that follows are things that most adults don't generally associate with lightheartedness or fun.
Perhaps you could describe what the light and fun elements of your app are so as to provide contrast to those other optional restrictive and conservative features?
All of those features are optional, to most it's very much fun and light
I'd imagine this would be important to some people.
Sounds like a pretty unique feature in the world of chat apps. Were there any technical difficulties in implementing that?
The site says: _Women_ can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind.
Which is correct?